Access/Accessibility

Because Google Documents is a Google application, it is designed to be accessible from any device compatible with Google applications. This means that a Google Document can be accessed through a smartphone any time that phone is connected to the Internet. While there has been much discussion concerning access in computers and composition over the years (Arola 2010; DeVoss, Cushman, & Grabill 2005; Grabill 2003; Pigg 2014; Selfe 1999; Wysocki 2005), there has been little to illustrate the differences that exist when users have differing computer access to the same software. In a Pew Research report titled “U.S. smartphone use in 2015,” Aaron Smith (2015) reported that “64% of American adults now own a smartphone of some kind, up from 35% in the spring of 2011. Smartphone ownership is especially high among younger Americans, as well as those with relatively high income and education levels. And for a number of Americans, smartphones serve as an essential connection to the broader world of online information” (para. 4-5). This means that most users accessing interactive writing

softwares have the capability to do so from their smartphone. Because much of what is delivered digitally is accessible through our mobile devices, my study concerns itself not with who does and does not have access, but how they have access, and what it means to the ways and whens

Figure 5.7 Smartphone full-screenshot with comment bubble

that scholars choose to write. And though this study does not concern itself with disability studies, I urge readers to consider the ways in which different device access may complicate use for those with special needs.

Since most people participating in academic writing have a choice in how to access their applications, the access issues that arise between devices are important for scholars to pay attention to. Additionally, some of our student’s only access to the internet is through a smartphone, and increasingly, scholars, and scholars in training, are taking advantage of the affordances mobile technologies allow in our day-to-day work lives. In her recent article, Stacey Pigg (2014) argued that “Mobile, networked technologies and the global economy thus mean augmented – if not precisely new – spatial tensions and challenges for academic writing processes in a mobile culture” (p. 253). Pigg focused mostly on writing environments in her article, which is a key piece in some of the value shifts in the labor of writing occurring now. She explained that our material conditions and our virtual ones overlap in a way that needs to be studied. One of these ways is “by accounting for material writing processes,” such as “material constraints and conditions of literate activity in everyday practice” (p. 254). In this case, both Pigg and I are concerned with everyday mobile practices. I am specifically concerned with the differentiations between full website interfaces and smartphone interfaces, and how this affects the ways users can access the same materials when they choose to work from spaces where work space and internet connectivity support one device more favorably than another.

The differences in interface between full website and smartphone are sharp. This matters because many scholars have the capability to use their smartphones to take notes, read articles, or even to get some writing done while on the go, and many of us take advantage of this capability. Further, since many of student writers have only access through their smartphone, and it is

crucial that instructor-scholars are familiar with interface differences so we can assist when needed. In Figure 5.6, I have collaged two screen shots of the same content and corresponding comment bubble. In the screen shot directly above the text, the full website laptop interface is visible, though I have cut the shot about ¼ down the full page. In the vertical facing screen shot to the right, the interface is from my entire smartphone screen, and displays the content with the comment bubble open. Even though the full webpage screen is cut to show only what is

necessary, there is still much more information displayed in the full website version, and that information is arguably more visually accessible. In a larger interface, the information is

structured in a way that users are accustomed to, with the menus along the top, and the comment bubble to the side, aligned with the highlighted text. In the full web version, users have access to the font, the tools, and retain the capability to easily add another comment to the document. The human looking at the screen can see all the elements involved in the document at once, and choices in function are obvious to any skilled user. In the smartphone interface, the information is limited. With the comment bubble open, there are no menus along the top of the screen, and the capability users have to add a new comment are not readily present when the user is viewing the content of the comment bubble. When the bubble is closed on the smartphone interface, the ability to create a new comment bubble appears at the top of the screen, which is illustrated in Figure 5.7. But because the smartphone size limits the amount of information that can be displayed onscreen, understanding what features are available for use becomes difficult. For users unfamiliar with the smartphone interface, these limitations can be frustrating and hinder desires to use the application. Figure 5.7shows the other user present in that portion of the screen. The menu along the top grants easy access to adding another user, and to adding a comment. But the user still has no option to change font, or to alter the design of the document.

For users who have access only to mobile technology, using a writing software on their device has an imbalance of limitations over affordances involving temporal-materiality in interesting ways, and the affordances are value changing. If high productivity is valued in the traditional industrial labor model, then mobile technologies are an advantage. In 2005, DeVoss, Cushman, and Grabill asked, “What material, technical, discursive, institutional, and cultural conditions prohibit and enable writing with multiple media?” (p. 23). And the question is not only still relevant, but arguably more so, now that so many people own and operate smartphone technology every day. Smartphone data is capable of finding a connection almost anywhere in a high-population dense environment, even without a traditional Internet connection. This means users can work from the train they use to commute to the office; they can use their phones at restaurants with a public connection; they can use their phones while they drive. In this case, multiple media and multiple devices enable writing to take place almost anywhere within an area with decent connectivity. This increases the time we are available to work, and can be contacted. As this availability increases, so do the expectations for availability increase in terms of when we perform labor. For users with a choice between devices they can access, mobile technology can eliminate long delays in interaction, increasing the contact and time between asynchronous actions within a document. Figure 5.7 shows that the two buttons that are easiest to access are ‘sharing’ (indicated by the bust silhouette next to a +, and the speech bubble that makes comment bubbles), indicating that interaction is key to the function of the Google Document. The values that are represented are increased connectivity between people, and between laborer and labor.

While the affordances temporally and materially shift values concerning labor and writing are great, the limitations in current technology use are stifling. Working from anywhere

at any time, as I showed earlier, can be subjectively problematic as well as enabling. Arguably the greatest limitation concerning interface difference is the change that takes place in interface when a full website must become smartphone compatible. Porter (2009) explained, “Designing information for ready and usable access by mobile phones is perhaps the most important way to support access by a broader socioeconomic range of users – and also by users across the globe” (p. 216). Because smartphones are even more prevalent than they were in 2009, it is crucial that we examine the delivery of information through the smartphone interface. Today, not only must a web page be smartphone compatible to be digestible in a mobile environment, but it must be compatible with a variety of smartphones. Figures 5.6 & 5.7 are from a Motorola built Android Mini smartphone, and so the interface of the Google Document you see is compatible with the software written for that phone. An iPhone interface may have different choices on screen inside a Google Document. When writers interact with one another through these mobile interfaces, they need to know what these limitations are, or knowledge accessibility becomes an

insurmountable factor. Since I have never used Google Docs on an iPhone, I may be unable to assist a colleague or student who uses one. This undercuts the ease of collaboration that cloud tools were created to afford.